US vinyl market worth more than YouTube, Vevo and Spotify Free combined

Vinyl holds its own as streaming revenue hits $1 billion for the first time.

New figures posted by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have revealed that vinyl sales in the US in the first half of 2015 contributed more to the music industry than Spotify Free, YouTube and Vevo combined.

As What Hi-Fi reports, vinyl sales are up 52% and are now responsible for 30% of all physical units shifted in the US this year. Sales of physical formats were down 17% to $748 million. Despite commanding just 7% of the overall market share, the value of the vinyl market has outstripped free or ad-supported streaming services.

While this does not include paid subscription services like Spotify Premium or streaming radio services (Apple Music was not included as the launch coincided with the final day of the report period), the news further emphasises the role vinyl is playing in the industry, with newpressingplants opening a dime a dozen across North America in 2015.

Cary Sherman, chairman and CEO of the RIAA, expressed his unease at the situation in a column for Forbes, writing: “When vinyl records, which peaked in the 1960s and ’70s, generate more revenue for the industry in 2014 than the billions of ad-supported on-demand streams on YouTube and similar services, something is fundamentally wrong with the market.”

On the flip side, revenue from streaming services overtook physical sales in the US for the first six months of this year, growing 23% to $1.03 billion.